The Muslim headscarf and face perception: "they all look the same, don't they?"

The headscarf conceals hair and other external features of a head (such as the ears). It therefore may have implications for the way in which such faces are perceived. Images of faces with hair (H) or alternatively, covered by a headscarf (HS) were used in three experiments. In Experiment 1 particip...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2014-02, Vol.9 (2), p.e84754-e84754
Main Authors: Toseeb, Umar, Bryant, Eleanor J, Keeble, David R T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Bias
Biology
Cognition & reasoning
Experimental psychology
Experiments
Eye movements
Face
Female
Hair
Hijab (Custom)
Humans
Islam
Male
Memory
Minority & ethnic groups
Neurosciences
Pattern recognition
Perceptions
Photic Stimulation
Researchers
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Studies
Task Performance and Analysis
Visual Perception - physiology
Women
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The headscarf conceals hair and other external features of a head (such as the ears). It therefore may have implications for the way in which such faces are perceived. Images of faces with hair (H) or alternatively, covered by a headscarf (HS) were used in three experiments. In Experiment 1 participants saw both H and HS faces in a yes/no recognition task in which the external features either remained the same between learning and test (Same) or switched (Switch). Performance was similar for H and HS faces in both the Same and Switch condition, but in the Switch condition it dropped substantially compared to the Same condition. This implies that the mere presence of the headscarf does not reduce performance, rather, the change between the type of external feature (hair or headscarf) causes the drop in performance. In Experiment 2, which used eye-tracking methodology, it was found that almost all fixations were to internal regions, and that there was no difference in the proportion of fixations to external features between the Same and Switch conditions, implying that the headscarf influenced processing by virtue of extrafoveal viewing. In Experiment 3, similarity ratings of the internal features of pairs of HS faces were higher than pairs of H faces, confirming that the internal and external features of a face are perceived as a whole rather than as separate components.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0084754